MARKET REPORT: Dealers dig into miner Eurasian

Kazakh based miner Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation climbed 11.4p to 334p amid speculation it has rejected a bid approach from a major shareholder.

Turnover swelled to more than 14m as excited dealers heard that Alijan Ibragimov, who owns 8.8 per cent of the group’s equity and is a member of a well-known circle of oligarchs in Kazakhstan known as the ‘Trio’, has recently tabled a 450p a share bid which had been kicked into touch by the ENRC board. The stock’s 52-week peak was 759p.

Credit Suisse had attracted early buying interest by upgrading to outperform from neutral and lifting its target price to £4 from 350p. The broker said it believes downside risks are now limited with potential re-rating catalysts in 2013. It says with a stable cycle the shares offer significant optionality on earnings growth into 2014/15.

Eurasian is attractive to a bidder
because it is one of the world’s largest producers of ferrochrome and
one of the world’s significant exporters of iron ore. But any interested
party would have to get the nod from Kazakhmys, 23p off at 785.5p, as it sits on 26 per cent of ENRC’s equity.

Among other miners, platinum group Lonmin rose 13.6p to 332.6p on hopes that major shareholder Xstrata, 0.5p easier at 1175p, once it merges with Glencore International, 0.25p dearer at 391.7p, will launch another bid for the platinum miner.

The Footsie slipped from 6,134 on profit-taking to finish 13.72 points easier at 6,107.86, while the FTSE 250 shed
38.69 points to 12,759.14. Cautious investors were aware that Federal
Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was due to speak after-hours at the
University of Michigan and was bound to be asked questions about the
Fed’s asset purchase programme with the possibility of it ending later
this year.

Outside of the leaders, the day’s outstanding performer by a country mile was Angle.
Shares of the specialist medtech company rocketed 40.5p or 140 per cent
to 69.5p after announcing a major breakthrough in its cancer diagnostic
product Parsortix.

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Parsortix is a non-invasive technology captures and counts rare circulating tumour cells from the blood of cancer patients.

Angle
has now designed a process for recovering the captured cells from the
Parsortix cassette. The cells are then analysed by a variety of
contemporary techniques.

Broker Cenkos believes Angle could be one of the top performers in the biotech sector this year.

It’s sum-of-the-parts valuation target price is £2. David Wright’s communications and marketing group Porta
jumped 1.75p or 30 per cent to 7.62p after reporting that trading is
ahead of management expectations. Annualised revenues are now running in
excess of £16m, which is a significant increase on the previous year.

The company also announced a new public relations venture in Hong Kong which it hopes to be a launch pad into China.

Iofina
added 5.5p to a 52-week high of 111p on further consideration of
Investec’s upgrade to buy and raise target price to 117p from 70p.

On
hearing that the company had suffered a ‘slight shortfall’ at the end
of the year in orders expected for immediate shipment to Life Sciences
customers based in continental Europe, sellers dragged decontamination
technology company Bioquell 12.5p lower to 14.5p.

As a result, full-year revenues are now expected to be £41m, down on £41.3m in 2011. Superglass,
a manufacturer of glass mineral fibre insulation products, cracked
0.38p to 5.75p following chairman John Colley’s bearish comments at the
AGM.

He warned that
‘extremely challenging and difficult’ trading conditions in the UK is
having an effect and input cost pressures persist.